Through All the Length of Days
by OxfordKivrin
Summary: A collection of snapshots in the lives of Sam Stewart and Andrew Foyle. Consistent with "Burn Brighter Through the Cold." Previously posted on Tumblr.
1. Nurse and Patient

"Let me," Sam says, reaching for the thermometer after he's turned it around twice. "Just over a hundred."

Andrew frowns. "How much over?"

"Quarter of a degree." Sam points. He keeps frowning, but she's too tired to argue. She puts the thermometer down, then shifts the cushion under her elbow to hold the hot water bottle closer against the sore spot on her side.

"I can bring you another…"

"Andrew. Any more pillows and there'll be no room in the bed for me." She nudges him through the bedclothes. "What you _ought_ to do is put the baby here by me, and go to _work._ "

He glances over to the Moses basket, visibly relaxing when he sees the baby still soundly asleep, then shakes his head. "Wouldn't get anything done."

"I'm…" she stops herself in time and finishes, "feeling so much better this morning." The very worst quarrel they'd had, in the first year they were married, was after she said _I'm going to be fine_ and he shouted _you can't know that_. "The sulfa pills work awfully fast."

"Good." He starts and looks at the clock. "Oh, damn, you should have the next…"

"Not until ten. And you could just leave them here, you know, I can keep track."

"No, you're meant to rest."

Sam flops back on the pillows. "I am resting. I'm positively worn out with resting."

That does make him grin, though his eyes are still dark. "Well, that's a good start. I'm going to keep you here until you're exhausted with it. Now, do you want the wireless, or the newspaper, or your library book?"

"Book, please, but would you get my comb first? My hair's going to send me mad if I don't do something with it."

He brings the comb, but when she can't hold back a wince as she lifts her left arm, Andrew sits back down on the bed. "Here, let me." He starts from the bottom, very gently.

"No." Sam pushes halfheartedly at him. "You shouldn't get so…"

He smiles properly this time, all the way to his eyes. "You can try, sweetheart, but I don't think you can give me mastitis."

"I suppose not." Sam has to laugh at herself. "Thank you, darling. I'm sorry I'm such a crosspatch." She settles closer to let him work on her hair.

"You're not. Well, just a bit."

Hours later, getting up to change the baby, Sam catches sight of herself in the mirror and giggles aloud at the uneven braids Andrew made. But she leaves them in all the next day, until she can comfortably bend over the basin to wash her hair.


	2. Patient and Nurse

The sore throat comes first. He gets another cup of tea and thinks _no._ The ache starts around his eye, and he thinks _no, not again, NO._ The pressure builds across his cheekbones and in his forehead, _damn it all,_ his throat goes from raw to burning, _oh, bloody hell,_ and then, once everything already hurts and it will be really excruciating, the sneezing starts.

Sam's brisk and matter-of-fact as always. _Not your fault_ and _drink this_ and _ten more minutes in the steam_ and _leave those here to soak._ Still, when his noise wakes her up for the second time in one night he croaks out another apology. "Gone from looking after your mother to looking…" He loses the rest of the sentence in a thunderous sneeze.

"Bless. Shh." Sam hugs him from behind. "This winter's already better than last, and December shouldn't even count, you shook it off so quickly." She reaches up to rub the spot over his left eye where the pressure gathers. "You ought to get a medal for this bit," she says in his ear.

He catches her hand and brings it to his lips. _"You_ ought to get a medal for this bit."


	3. Nine Ounces of Wool

When they were first walking out, in 1940, Sam bought herself an Essentials For The Forces knitting leaflet and the requisite nine ounces of wool in RAF blue. She asked her mother to post her the proper needles, and set to work to knit her young man a pullover.

She'd never been much good at knitting, but a jumper surely would be less fiddly than socks, and most of it ought to be fairly straightforward. She did have to try three times to cast on, but after that she made such good progress on the ribbed waistband that she began to think she'd be finished well before Christmas. The nubbly pattern for the body of the pullover proved a challenge, though. She had to keep track of the right and wrong side, which wasn't easy with dark wool, and when she tried to knit while listening to the wireless she always made mistakes that she had to pick out. And the project was too bulky to bring back and forth to the station with her, even if she'd been bold enough to face questions about who she was knitting for.

By stir-up Sunday she had only worked six inches of the back panel. She put it aside and bought Andrew a set of cufflinks. (They weren't new - she got them at the St. Clement's jumble sale - but they were good.)

In the winter, after he left for Debden, she picked the jumper up again and worked diligently for a few months, finishing the back panel and starting on the front, but as spring wore on it was hard to feel any urgency about it. Even as the evenings grew colder in the autumn of '41, she only looked guiltily at her workbag and told herself she'd have to do more tomorrow.

When he threw her over she unraveled it all. Margaret, one of the girls who shared her digs, found her frowning tearfully over a tangle of wool, and talked sympathetically while helping Sam wind the yarn around a colander and steam it to get rid of the kinks. "Jumpers take such a time when you're only knitting in the evenings," Margaret said. "I don't know a girl who's given one to the same man she started it for unless they were married when she began it." When the wool was dry Margaret helped her wind it, and Sam packed it and the leaflet away with her out-of-season clothes in the box room.

She thought briefly of starting a pullover for Joe - he always complained of being cold - but she couldn't help remembering Margaret's words and feeling just a trifle superstitious about starting another one. And blue wouldn't have matched Joe's khaki, in any case.

After Sam was ill, during the dismal week of post-hospital convalescence that Mr. Foyle insisted on before he'd let her come back to work, sheer boredom made her dig out the leaflet again and consider starting a pair of mittens. It would be something to do with her hands during Joe's kind, awkward visits. But sense prevailed, and she packed the wool away with some naphthalene, and forgot it.

She did not think of it all through the long busy autumn of '42, through the bleak December when Jane Milner was killed and the grim January when the station was shorter-handed than ever after losing Constable Peters. She didn't think of it while Mr. Foyle was so ill that she steeled herself to write to Andrew about him, nor when Andrew turned up exhausted and worried in the middle of the night. Not even as Mr. Foyle recovered and she and Andrew hesitantly lowered their defenses towards each other, not even when she kissed him shamelessly in the Parade before he went back to Debden.

She forgot it until the bitterly cold winter of '46, when they were not yet six months married and she was just beginning to suspect she might be pregnant. They were minding the house in Steep Lane while Mr. Foyle was in America, but Andrew was slaving to finish his degree and so Sam had whole weeks on her own while he was up at Oxford. She found the wool when she was turning out boxes she'd brought from Lyminster, and she started a scarf for Andrew. Whether from the work or the traveling or simply the lingering effects of the sinusitis that had ended his flying career, he had a whole string of terrible colds, and it was good to have something to do when he was away and not feeling well. Knit two, purl two, every row: she could do that between conversations at SSAFA, or standing in a queue at the shops. She only worked on it when Andrew was away, but even so, it went so quickly she was almost sorry when she was done.

Andrew said he was never as miserable once he had that scarf. Sam said it was the end of March when he started wearing it so the worst of the season was over in any case. All the same, she never saw him wrap it around his throat without a little burst of warmth in her own chest at the sense of all those memories spun into nine ounces of dark-blue wool.


	4. Christmas 1945

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Lyminster are a whirlwind, with none of the pious hush Andrew imagined. It's like something between Eights Week and end of term, with a dash of wedding breakfast mixed in. The doorbell and the telephone never stop ringing, the kettle never cools, and he introduces himself to so many parishioners that _Samantha's-husband-Andrew_ ceases to have any meaning. Even in the moments when it's just Sam's parents and the two of them, as when they have toast and tea standing up in the kitchen after midnight service, there's a giddy feeling of stealing leisure.

Mrs. Stewart calls him "Andrew, dear." Small children whose older siblings had Sam for a Sunday-School teacher call him "Mr. Samantha." (He tries to keep their elders from dissuading them.) Only a very few people need it explained that he isn't the Mr. Foyle that Miss Stewart was driving during the war. His wedding ring comes in for a good many stares, though the only comment he catches is _doesn't look like a fancy man even if he does wear jewelry_.

Boxing Day is no quieter, as it's also St. Stephen's day - _our patronal festival_ , Mr. Stewart says. Andrew nods and only asks Sam what that means once they're in bed. _The feast day of whomever a church is named for. You really are an utter heathen_ , she whispers. Then she kisses him, and kisses him, until they're both trembling.


	5. Oft I Strayed

Sam knew - _of course,_ Andrew thought - how to change a bed with someone in it. Sergeant Milner arrived when they were about to start, and instantly shucked off his overcoat to help Andrew turn his father first to the near side of the bed, then onto the fresh sheets, while Sam rapidly folded up the sweat-damp bedclothes and smoothed the new ones into place. Beside Milner's suit-clad height, Andrew felt small and disheveled, suddenly aware that his shirttails were trying to escape, he had cough syrup on his sleeve, and his collar was crushed.

"You roll, I'll tuck," Sam said to Milner, and they smiled at each other in a way that made Andrew forget to breathe. _Don't be an ass_ , he said to himself. _It's nothing to do with you._

 _You saw to that._

Dad frowned as they turned him, and his breath rumbled wetly in his chest when they had to let him lie flat, but he didn't wake. Once he was settled against the pillows, the lines smoothed out of his face, and his breathing eased. All the same, Andrew checked the warmth of his forehead again, still not quite daring to believe the fever had broken.

"Is he..?" Sam asked softly.

Andrew opened his mouth to answer, then had to shut it fast when his throat went tight and he realized his voice was going to break if he tried to say anything. He nodded hard and made some unnecessary adjustments to the counterpane.

"I'll let… let Milner out," she said. For a moment Andrew thought she'd touch his arm, but she moved on past him and ushered Milner ahead of her into the hall.

 _The sergeant's been helping him shave and things_ , Sam had said, and Andrew had joked _Brave man_ , meaning only that Dad took assistance with poor grace. But she'd answered _He is_ in all seriousness. And when Andrew had wondered if Dad's mumbled "Peter" meant he wanted Milner, she'd shaken her head and said, immediately, _He's called Paul._ But he'd been too busy, and much too frightened, to think about that at the time.

And then he'd gone and all but hugged her in the flood of relief when they found Dad's temperature nearly normal. "Bloody hell," he whispered out loud. "Bloody _hell."_

 _You said yourself she should begin again,_ he thought _. And isn't Milner what she deserves? A good, good-looking man with a steady, responsible job who doesn't mess her - doesn't mess anyone - about?_

The hall light went out, the front door opened and closed, and the light came back on, but Sam did not reappear. Andrew waited, matching his own breaths to Dad's slow, steady ones, until he could bear it no longer and went looking for her.

He didn't need to go far. She was just down the hall, sitting on the floor next to the dining chair where, sometime in the afternoon, they'd abandoned the sandwiches they couldn't face along with the baked custard they'd tried and failed to spoon into Dad. She had her legs out straight in front of her (one stocking up, one stocking down), her back to the wall, her head bent as she crammed a sandwich into her mouth with one hand and cupped the other beneath to catch the crumbs. She looked rumpled and exhausted and beautiful. Andrew dug his nails into his palms before he spoke.

"All right?"

Sam looked up with a hand pressed to her busy lips. "Sorry," she said, when she'd swallowed. "All at once I'm famished. You must be, too."

He shrugged and glanced back towards Dad's room, but his stomach rumbled audibly.

"I'll sit with him if you…"

"No. No, I'll leave the door open, so…" Andrew shrugged again. "Thanks."

Sam looked away, then pushed the plate of sandwiches towards him.

Andrew took one and sat down on the floor, on the other side of the chair. He wanted to sit next to her; he wanted to do more than that. Instead he took a bite of the dry bread and cheese.

"How did you leave it with Dr. Davies?" Sam asked.

"He said he'd be back in the morning, unless…" could he say _we_ in _we sent for him?_ Andrew wasn't sure. "Unless things became alarming. _More_ alarming," he added in an undertone.

"Mm." Sam took another sandwich.

Half-formed sentences drifted through Andrew's mind. _I'm glad you have… I wish you both… I was a fool…_ He let his head rest against the wall. _I, I, I. That's the problem._

Dad coughed, and they both tensed, but it only lasted a moment.

"There's Bovril," Sam said, tapping the side of the jug. "Not hot anymore, but…"

"That sounds marvelous."

She grinned. "It does, doesn't it?"

 _Don't be an ass_ , Andrew said to himself, over and over, as they passed the jug back and forth and devoured the sandwiches. _Be grateful you have this much, this moment, with her._ Still, when he watched her strong, slender fingers at her lips, and remembered her steady voice saying "It will be all right," he felt as if his oxygen line had split at twenty thousand feet.

* * *

 _For Pauline Dorchester, who wondered what was going on in Andrew's head during_ Burn Brighter Through the Cold.


	6. August 1945

Nothing could be more familiar than a morning drive, but Andrew's Uncle Charles' car is smaller than the Wolseley, and it feels odd to be barehanded and bareheaded at the wheel. When Sam turns in the approach to the docks, her wedding band gleams in the sun, and she has to pull her eyes back to the road.

"Remember how to open the trapdoor to get on the roof?"

"I remember, Dad," Andrew says from the backseat. "Remember you never let me do more than peep over the sill," he adds in an undertone. Sam catches his eye in the mirror and presses her lips together to keep from smiling. She parks the car in the shadow of an American lorry unloading what seems to be a never-ending stream of GIs, and hops out, thinking how nice it is to be in trousers and not to have to worry about keeping her knees quite so tightly together.

"Be sure to lock the garden gate if you're going to be away overnight."

"Against the marauding acorn-stealing ruffians of Hastings, yes, understood, we will." Andrew opens the boot and pulls out his father's suitcase. Ignoring the outstretched hand, he carries it towards the gangway.

"Temperature gets below freezing for any length of time, let the bathroom tap drip so the pipes don't freeze."

"Isn't this all covered in the typewritten _novel_ of instructions you've left us?"

His father tips his head towards one shoulder. "Is it?"

"It is, s-," Sam swallows. "Is."

He smiles with the familiar quirk of an eyebrow that says _don't think I missed that._ Then his gaze takes in Andrew as well, and the corners of his eyes soften. "Well, glad to know one of you read it."

"It's in the desk, next to the phone book, for ready reference," Sam tells him.

All at once they're at the foot of the gangway. He reaches in the pocket of his coat for his ticket and takes the case from Andrew. "Right. Thank you for the lift. I'll, um. Wire from New York."

"Look after yourself, Dad," Andrew says, a little roughly. Sam takes his hand.

"Yes. You too, both of you." A pause, a cock of the head. "Don't do anything daft."

Andrew shakes his head. Sam echoes the movement, and then, holding Andrew's hand so tightly that his ring bites into her own fingers, she adds, "You either. Dad."

His face - her father-in-law's face - creases sharply around the mouth with an upside-down smile. He drops his head so the shadow of his hat hides his eyes. "Do my best."


	7. Where To Kiss Your Husband

Sam was just trying to find a spot on Andrew's neck that wouldn't actually scratch her. (Thirty-six hours without shaving made him a bit of a hazard, really.) But when she kissed behind and a bit under his ear, above the stubble and below the soft tangle of his dark hair, he shivered and made a sound that went straight to... _places._ She let go of the saucepan she'd reached past him to grab, and did it again. He melted between her and the kitchen dresser and said, in a soft rough voice, "Sure you want to make lunch now?"


	8. Where To Kiss Your Wife

Andrew pushed the duvet against Sam's side so she wouldn't feel the draft as he slipped out of bed, but she stirred, then stretched, giving the contented waking-up hum he was already learning to expect. Her hand snaked out from under the bedclothes to catch his. "Not time to get up…?"

"Not time," Andrew agreed. "Back in a tick." He brushed his lips over her knuckles, then against the inside of her wrist. He meant it for a soothing touch, but Sam smiled and cupped her hand to his face.

"Again," she said, her voice languid but no longer sleepy.


	9. Stepping Out, 1940

Sam had a system for evenings she was going out. Frock rolled, not folded, in a spare pillowslip; lipstick, powder, and eyebrow pencil packed in a pencil case; silk stockings in a jam jar; shoes turned top-to-top; the lot packed in her small MTC-approved haversack. She could change in ten minutes in the small lavatory off the lobby that had been labeled VISITORS when she first came to Hastings and now said LADIES. The difficult bits were getting her uniform tunic and belt into the haversack, and not having another girl to check that her seams were straight. She'd gotten quite good at contorting herself with her hand mirror, though. It helped to have such tight quarters. She could brace a foot on one wall and her back on the other while she held the mirror under her calf.

They were going dancing, so she had her blue. It swished the most, even if it was a bit schoolgirlish with the bow in the back. She hoped her most sophisticated hairdressing made up for that. Violet had… but she wasn't going to compare herself to Violet. She checked her make-up one last time, then tucked her comb away in her purse and unlocked the door.

Mr. Foyle was talking to Sergeant Rivers when she came behind the counter to collect her overcoat from the rack, but he stopped and smiled as he gave her a quick up-and-down glance. "Out tonight?"

"If you don't need me, sir."

"Not at all. Have a good time. But, um… nnot the Flamingo, Sam, I hope."

"No, sir. It's closed, isn't it?"

"Sadly not. Some friend of Gannon's took it on. Nothing clearly underhand at work, but in any case…"

Andrew wouldn't have wanted to go there in any case, even if Sam had, which she certainly didn't. "No fear, sir. Usual time tomorrow?"

"Yes, please. Good night."

"Good night. Sergeant," she nodded in turn to Rivers, then tapped her way across the lobby and out the swing doors.

She always felt a bit nervous until she saw Andrew waiting for her on their corner, even though he'd only been late once. Tonight, though, he was there and watching for her, and from half a street away she could see his grin.

"You look smashing," he said, taking her haversack. "Do you mind the bike? I brought a scarf in case you want it for your hair."

"Thank you. And of course not." Sam smiled up at him. He smelled like petrol and leather, an exciting, heroic sort of smell that made her heart pound in her throat and her stomach at once. "No one else tonight?" When there were other pilots with Andrew, usually someone had or could borrow a car.

Andrew's face clouded. "No," he said shortly.

Sam remembered her lipstick and pressed her lips together instead of biting the lower one. "Good," she answered. "I mean, I'm glad to have you to myself sometimes."

It was the right thing to have said. Andrew's dark eyes glowed and he put a hand on her arm to guide her towards where he'd parked the motorbike. "Nice not to be in a crowd," he agreed. "How was work?"

"All right. Bit dull today."

"Me, too. We were at half-hour readiness. The most tedious, because you can't go far, but you also have too much time to stew when a scramble does come."

"Did you have many?"

"No. And it was quick, when we did." Andrew tucked her haversack in the cargo box of the bike, then handed her a white silk scarf, the sort airmen wore to keep their flight jackets from chafing their necks. "Oh, I've got something else for you. So you don't have to screw your eyes shut." From a pocket he drew out a set of sunglasses.

"Oh! I'm going to feel like an American film star." Sam put them on at once.

"You look like one." Andrew put on his own functional goggles while she arranged the scarf, then helped her on to the pillion seat before he got on himself and started the bike. Sam held tight around his waist, pressed her cheek into his jacket, and closed her eyes against a swooping feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with the roar of the motor.


	10. The Crystal of the Snow

The snow is still coming down, but the daylight is waning and the children are bad-tempered with inactivity, so Sam wraps them up and sends them to play in the garden. In blessed silence she finishes the washing-up from lunch and breakfast, and eats a couple squares from her precious private store of chocolate, then goes to peek through the curtains. Robin is on his back in a drift, pretending he's swimming, and Miranda is doggedly shoring up the base of a snowman. Sam lets the curtain fall, looks towards the closet where the broom and the carpet-sweeper wait for her, and then runs upstairs to change into trousers. She takes the biggest celluloid buttons from her button jar, and pulls her MTC cap from the back of the top shelf of the wardrobe.

They're both at her the minute she comes outside with _Mummy, look, Mummy!_ and _help me make the head, Mummy!_ She applauds Robin's snow angels and makes a little pile of snowballs for him to throw at the hedge to keep him busy while she helps Miranda lift the snowman's head into place. Lately he's liked nothing better than watching things go to bits when he kicks them, and if he destroys something of Miranda's it's even odds whether she'll cling to her four years' superiority and remain graciously unmoved, or fly into a fury.

Miranda makes a wide, glittering smile out of the buttons, and sets the MTC cap at a jaunty angle. Robin howls when snow creeps into the space between his mitten and his cuff. Sam admires and soothes and thinks she ought to have started the potatoes boiling before she came out. Perhaps she can go in first and not call the children until she has some cocoa made.

A snowball bursts on the side of the house. "Surprise attack!" Andrew shouts as he charges through the gate. He easily deflects Robin's snowball with his briefcase, then stops short when he sees Miranda's snowman. Robin crashes into his legs, but Andrew just sets a hand on his shoulder.

"Do you like it, Dad?" Miranda asks.

"Hold my case, please, son," he says to Robin, and gives him the briefcase. He pulls off his snow-caked gloves, tucks them under one arm, and then takes the MTC cap and runs a hand around the inner band. "Miranda, where'd you get this?"

'I brought it out with the buttons," Sam explains. "A snowman needs a hat, and I didn't want to get a good one wet."

Andrew's eyes go far away, and he fingers the brim. "A good one," he says, under his breath. "Sam. It's your _uniform."_

"It's not as if I'd been in the Forces." She shrugs.

"Isn't it?" He steps closer to tug off the woolly tam she's wearing, and then sets the cap in its place. "It is to me." His gaze should melt the snow around them; it leaves Sam breathless.

"Do you like it, Dad?" Miranda repeats.

"Oh! Yes, it's a very fine snowman, but I think…" He puts his own homburg where Sam's cap had been. "There! Now it's perfect."

"Andrew," Sam protests.

"It'll dry."

"You're getting snowed on," she points out, and indeed, the flakes are like stars in his dark hair. He grins and puts on her tam, pulling it down over his ears. "Andrew!" she says again, but she can't keep from laughing.


	11. February 1941

_I don't sleep, I can't eat, I feel sick. Sometimes I can't stand it because you're not with me. Other times, I don't care if I ever see you again. I know that's horrible, I don't want it to be true but it's as if you don't exist for me, as if we never met. -_ Andrew in the episode **Enemy Fire**

* * *

"Don't make me go back," Andrew whispered. "Don't... " A pinched, choking sob caught him. "Don't make me go back…"

Sam took the untouched tea out of his shaking hands and set it on the floor. "Shh," she said helplessly. "Andrew. Shh."

"Don't make… make me…"

She put her arms around his shoulders. He didn't cry like a little boy. He cried like a man at a child's funeral: with quiet, painful, unpracticed sobs. His flying jacket and his forehead were equally clammy to the touch. Sam bit her lip as she stroked his damp hair. "I won't." _I can't, really,_ she added silently, to counter her own arguments. _What would I do, hit him over the head and drag him?_ "I won't make you."

The sobs came faster then. "Sam," he gulped.

"I'm here. It's all right, I'm here." She rubbed his back as she frowned at the clock on the mantel. Bets was likely to be back from the Guides meeting at any moment, and Mrs. Briggs would be there within three-quarters of an hour. Thank goodness Marjorie was on nights and had already left to catch her bus. Andrew shuddered against her, whether from tears or from chill, she couldn't tell. She touched her lips to his forehead.

"'M not ill," he protested, thought he didn't move away. "Haven't got that much luck."

Sam swallowed hard. "Would that be luck?"

He shrugged. When she looked, she could see his eyes were squeezed shut but the tears were still coming, as inexorable as the rain, though the ragged hitches in his breathing stopped just short of sobs. His lips were cracked and peeling, and she wanted to kiss them even as she wanted to shake him and shout _what do you mean, as if we'd never met?_ But alongside the hot sting of those words she felt a glow that might have been pride, because however far out of his head he was with flying fatigue, he'd come to her.

"Well, I'm going to look after you as if you were. Tonight, anyway."

He nodded, and swiped at his cheeks with the back of one hand. Sam sat back on her heels and tried to think. She couldn't hide him in her room - aside from anything else, the latch was weak and the door liable to swing open from the vibration of someone passing in the hall. There was a Morrison under the dining-room table, hidden by the tablecloth, but if a siren went he'd be discovered, and there was the same problem with the cellar. And whatever he said about not being ill, he needed to be out of the damp.

Then it came to her. Mrs. Briggs had a box room - well, a deep closet - between Sam's room and the bathroom, made out of the leftover space when what had been the back bedroom on the first floor was made over for a bath and a toilet. Behind the rod that supported Mrs Briggs' ancient wedding gown and a few even more ancient coats far too narrow for her current bulk but too precious for the jumble, and Bets' footlocker, there was a good five feet of space. She could give him her blanket and torch, and a hot water bottle and a thermos flask of tea. And a Kilner jar, in case.

"Come on," she said, getting to her feet. She held out her hand and Andrew put his trustingly in it.


	12. At First Sight (August 1940)

All the way to the station on her cycle, and all the way up to Mr. Foyle's house in the car, Sam kept running through the telephone conversation with her father, adding all the clever things she ought to have said to his murmurings about Morality and swallowing all the childish whats and whys she shouldn't have.

Sam had her mouth open to say _Good morning, sir_ before she saw that it wasn't Mr. Foyle at the door, but a man her own age in light-blue shirtsleeves and dark-blue braces.

"Oh," she said. "Hello!"

"Hello!" He looked as startled as she felt, but he started to smile, just with one corner of his mouth, as if to say that for him it was a glad surprise. Not a shock, as it had been to Mr. Foyle when she reported for duty in May. "Are you…?"

"You must be Andrew!" Sam blurted out. She'd imagined a pilot must look like Leslie Howard or perhaps David Niven, but he was dark-haired and clean-shaven. She'd imagined Andrew Foyle would have blue eyes, like his father's, but they were brown, a clear warm brown like strong tea or a monk's robe in a stained-glass window. "I'm Samantha Stewart. I'm your father's driver."

He stepped back and held the door open for her. "Come in." His voice was unexpected, too, lighter and smoother than Mr. Foyle's, though there was a little of his father's measured rhythm to the words when he went on, "Um, he never told me he had a…"

"What?" Sam broke in, too quickly. Never told him he had a driver? But he needed a driver, she was needed, Dad was wrong, wrong about everything from the importance of her job to the sort of people she met.

"Well, um, a girl."

Something dropped like a lift in Sam's stomach.

Andrew's smile deepened a little. "Especially such a pretty one." He tilted his head and those eyes flicked over her as if… as if…

"I see you don't hold back." Sam tightened her hands around her driving gloves. Oh, this was worse than Tony. She hadn't liked Tony, not seriously, but he'd been sweet in his shy efforts to flirt, not lordly. _Pilots think they're God's gift_ , one of the girls she'd trained with had said, and oh, it seemed that was much much too true. "Obviously been well trained by the R.A.F."

He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms languidly. "Have you met many pilots?" The smile was smug, now. Sam would have liked to kick his shins.

"No," she answered coolly, keeping her back straight. "I tend to mix more with policemen." She raised her eyes to the fanlight over the door. "Just as well, really."

There was an awkward pause, and he straightened up. "Look, I didn't mean to offend you," he said. "We've got plenty of W.A.A.F. drivers. I just didn't expect to meet one driving my dad."

 _I didn't expect to meet a… a…_ masher _… in Mr. Foyle's house._ "Well." Sam held herself as much like Queen Mary as she could. "I was hoping to cook or knit balaclavas for His Majesty's forces, but here I am."


	13. A Long Time To Wait

_March, 1946_

Sam had resolved she wouldn't say a thing, not until after supper, anyway, but when Andrew called out a cheerful "Hello, sweetheart!" everything twisted in her chest and by the time he came through to the kitchen she was crying, silently and helplessly, over the cooker.

"I'm all right, I'm not hurt, I'm… not ill, I'm… sad, only sad…" she managed, but when his arms went around her she couldn't keep from sobbing.

"Sam…" He kissed her forehead, then her cheek. "Shhh, all right…"

"I was… h-hoping I'd have… something to tell you. Quite soon. But it seems there's… nothing at all."

He stroked her hair, then went still. One hand moved hesitantly down her back, then forward to rest softly just below her waist. "You were…?"

"Yes. Maybe. I don't know. It might just be the dreadful food that made me late, made me feel so odd… but if I was I'm certainly not now. Not now," she repeated.

Andrew held her close and for a moment she let herself cry into his chest. "You're all right, though?" he asked, when she drew back to wipe her eyes. "I don't need to put you to bed or… anything?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I even saw the doctor. I'm fine." The word felt like vinegar on her tongue. "People make it sound so easy when it would be getting in trouble," she went on, bitterly. "As if you just have to, to _trip_ and there's the stork on the way. But when I told the doctor how long we'd been married he all but patted me on the head, and said to be patient."

"It has only been seven months, sweetheart." Andrew moved a hand lightly over her arm, as if she were delicate as a robin's egg. "And I've been up at Oxford for bits of that."

"Yes. I know, yes. But… my parents were married ten years before I came along; that seems a dreadfully long time to wait."

Andrew took a slow breath. "It does, but if I can wait with you that's not so bad." He took her hand. "And if we do as well as your parents did, I'll be very pleased."

Sam swallowed hard and nodded, but another tear ran down to drip off her chin. "I think," she said, staring at the floor, "I didn't know how much I was hoping I was… until I knew I wasn't."


End file.
